Walter Mondale: Tim Pawlenty left this mess

MINNEAPOLIS— Walter Mondale unveiled a bipartisan, six-member committee Tuesday to try to come up with a plan to end Minnesota’s government shutdown - but Republican legislative leaders aren’t likely to be on board and Tim Pawlenty is already in the former vice president’s crosshairs.

In fact, Mondale couldn’t resist taking a shot at the former Minnesota governor and GOP presidential hopeful when POLITICO asked him after the press conference how much blame Pawlenty deserves for the current budget crisis.

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“He left basically the mess that we see — the huge deficits,” Mondale said. “He shifted these issues into the future so that he wouldn’t be around.”

But Mondale added he’s not sure how much that will hurt him in the battle for the Republican nomination. “I’m not an expert on Republican caucuses, but I think the argument he makes doesn’t hold up when you look at what happened,” Mondale said.

Pawlenty insists that he balanced the budget during each of his years as governor by controlling spending and not raising income taxes. He released a new ad Tuesday highlighting the 2005 government shutdown he allowed.

Mondale appeared with former Republican Gov. Arne Carlson in the cavernous, five-story rotunda of Minneapolis City Hall to lament the state’s budget crisis and announce the group they had formed to try to find a way out.

But on the surface, the whole proposition seems dubious.

Having an advisor to Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton intimately involved - Jim Schowalter, the Minnesota budget commissioner has been tapped as a key committee staffer - could raise credibility questions for the GOP.

Republicans already rejected an earlier Dayton idea to have a mediator help resolve the impasse. Carlson acknowledged that Republican Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch expressed hesitancy about the idea during a conversation he had with her.

Koch released a lukewarm statement about the “advisory committee” that noted she and her counterparts were actually elected to solve the problem.

“Republicans in the Legislature will continue to maintain our strong commitment against raising taxes and holding the line on runaway government spending,” she said. “I am always open to hearing thoughts and suggestions from all Minnesotans.”

Earlier, Mondale gave a vote of confidence to the committee.

“There can be cheap compromises that nobody is for, but we’re in a place where both sides have to sit down and think freshly about how we can come out with a result that serves Minnesota,” Mondale said. “I have every confidence that they’re going to come up with a superb plan.”

Mondale, 83, was slow and soft spoken, wearing a blazer and khakis with casual brown shoes. He expressed concern that a failure to swiftly resolve the shutdown will cause long-term damage to Minnesota’s national reputation.

“We are special,” he said. “I think that this state has always been a little bit different, and as far as I’m concerned better. Today we are being challenged…I’m afraid that if we don’t reassert Minnesota’s ability to think and create in this crisis that we will be overwhelmed by national pressures to take part in this national harsh ideological debate that we see in the nation’s capital and all over the country.”